Apple’s iPad announcement seems to have had one particularly big disappointment for most people – no front-facing camera. No camera at all in fact. But the iPad SDK and its iPad emulator seem to suggest what could have been…

The Apple iPad SDK has already made its way into the wild and with it comes an iPad emulator to allow developers to see how their apps will work on the device’s larger screen.

And nestled in the iPad emulator’s Contacts application there’s a hint that an iPad camera might have once been on the cards – an “Add Photo button”.

So far so good. Steve Jobs made it clear that the iPad would sync your photos from iPhoto (or other photo software) but as well as Choose Existing Photo, the iPad emulator Contacts app offers a Take Photo option.

The inclusion of a Take Photo option in the iPad emulator could mean a few things. Could a camera have been pulled from the iPad design at the last minute? It was said the same thing happened with the most recent generation of iPod Touch.

A more tedious explanation is that Apple simply ported the iPad contacts app from the iPhone OS’s version and forgot to remove the Choose Photo option.

Could Apple be planning to add a camera into the iPad? It’s not unthinkable but we may well have to wait until Apple iPad: the next generation for that.